In the commercial software world, user interfaces are generally designed by one group. Like Microsoft for Windows or Apple for Mac OS. Those desktop environments were designed by one company who did things like user testing and statistical analysis to try and make the desktop they thought would work best. Linux is different. Large groups definitely DO perform user testing and statistical analysis, but one group can also say "Here's what we want" and, if they have the ability to code it, their idea comes into being. It's pretty amazing, when you think about it. Linux lets people create what they want. If you don't like what's out there, fork it! Or start from scratch! You're in control!

Ok so its now dconf and dconf-editor. What about/happened to gconftool/gconftool-2, gconf-editor, gconf-merge-tree or gconf-schemas? gtweakui (or is that dtweakui)?

Wouldn't it be easier to have the config tools built to be more friendly? Come on... this is an alternative to Fallback-session? Which is going away in successive iterations of GNOME 3 and really hasn't *ANY* way to be fixable to the way it worked in GNOME 2.

If GNOME want to get rid of customization, they do why use GTK+ at all? Lets go back to developing display drivers especially for GNOME and remove X and Wayland all the way. GNOME seem to be re-doing everything else with the sever case of "Not Invented Here" syndrome.

In fact, lets just make a GNOME Kernel and GNOME system libs... Heck lets just make everything from the bootstrap all the way.

Let make the OS GNOME specific and all the libs and compilers for GNOME only... lets go back and refactor everything to rely on GNOME since that is the only way going forward, it appears.

Simplicity, "Sane Defaults" and removal of choice. Perfect, now lets get rid of all the Car Manufacturers except GM and Ford (since there has to be choice) and give you three choices from them: Sedan, Light Truck and Mini Van. No need for anything else... why let the consumer have any choice when they don't need it.

Oh, lets extend that to McDonald's and Burger King ONLY abolish all the other distracting restaurants. hmm... what abut clothing manufacturers... homes designs?

Wouldn't it just be easier if we just had one cell phone to pick from. Just one kind of soft drink. Oh, why not just one kind of bed... or carpet.

Yes, let us brand them all GNOME!

Just an FYI, I'm of the opinion the Gnome v1.4 was probably the best in customization. They allowed you, without having to resort to arcane registry editing tools, to set what you wanted, how you wanted it to work and to not have to use third party tools like devilspie to get the way you wanted to work.

Sorry, but the whole GNOME Development Team is going after the wrong set of targets. No not the wrong set of people... just the wrong set of targets for these people. Nobody likes being forced to eat the same dogfood everyone else is eating. Hence there are about 25,000 choices in automobiles, about as many choices in Motorcycles and well more than that in Food choices and clothing and... well mostly you name it.

GNOME3 is by far a good attempt at making things more easily usable, but they continue to remove changeability, for the sake of "SANE DEFAULTS" which will drive and has driven people away from it. Sure "good riddance; we wanted you not"... well when its whole swaths of people (Ubuntu, Linux Mint and others) its not a good thing to just ignore. Though they will continue to.

In all, GNOME is a great product and is well done. They do have some very "divine" ways of pissing on the userbase.